James Croal Jackson Nailed to a Bed, a Clarinet Falsetto, a Sky Painted with Eyes, Weedwacker Zen, and Hearts Propped Up

 I do not want to sleep I want to get smashed

but I fall asleep it is Friday my youth

is waning. Please tell me every time

you want me there. I love to say I

will think about it. And I will. To

feel if the sun will warm the air

enough to drink gallons the death

of me. I want you to nail me

down I want to stay in bed I want to

surround myself with hanging lights

and loud whiskey-drinkers and dance

around smashed Bud Light bottles

gleaming with the force of recent

desire– someone leaving their

own temporal body, someone

leaving their wallet behind,

someone leaving the world

so damn lonely now.

At Crazy Mocha (Shadyside)

I don’t know what you’re saying–

I was just baptized in sensory deprivation

saltwater. You took an Adderal

to live in your tornado of case papers,

clacking away at the keyboard buzzing

with school sentences I do not crave

to understand. From the speakers, jazz

dances uneven through honeyhive fluorescents

above us. I scoot my chair in closer

to the table, and there is a squeak either

from my movement or a clarinet falsetto.

Sometimes the world is synchronized;

sometimes a miracle I make excuses for.

I held the planet’s limestone on my neck

when I was afloat– it became weightless.

rust goggles

art began as a war against walls

everything in a painting was in danger of being lost

every object that has been moved every one

that has been smoothed every piece

outlined was once a living breathing being

water can dissolve rocks

paint on a canvas can bruise

an audience can be traumatized by art that is not lost

intertwining history with the present

is the divide between

good times things

and bad times things

  good times being the sky painted with eyes

  and bad times the sleepless nights we want

 a different kind of archive

art being our act of evasion

Grandview Heights

I need this walk through the suburbs

 summer heat has me a certain way

 lovers have me a certain way

I need to clear my head with the zen

of weedwackers droning, an SUV’s blur and

whoosh, lawnmowers torturing the grass–

white noise, white birds, white hybrids.

walked with white sneakers in the mud

last night drunk in the rain through an alley

Eggs Balloons

we inflated important 

words empty laughs

being sound balloons

attached to inflatable

proppable hearts buy twelve

in a bag for a dollar eggs break

the yolks watch that grease

pour into morning pans

James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and recent poems in DASH, Sampsonia Way, and Jam & Sand. He edits The Mantle (themantlepoetry.com). He works in film production in Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)